on truscum
ramblingsfromthelandofcotton replied to your post: Wait, what’s TruScum?
i remember reading their shit when i was younger and first coming to understand my identity. it always worried me, then i learned they’re all full of crap :DThat is indeed the biggest problem with truscum. They infect our youth with false ideals and makes them feel alone and hopeless when it comes to social, body and gender dysphoria. It’s the same internalized cissexism and binarism in truscum that affects gatekeeping in the medical field that keeps non-binary people from seeking treatment without lying.*
ETA: *It isn’t exactly the truscum affecting this, but the same ideologies are behind it. Trans* people still have little to no influence over medical treatments of trans* people regardless of how “true” they are.
I would have started gender therapy years earlier if I hadn’t kept running into so many strong stereotypes of what a “true” transsexual is. I was even turned away from a trans group once along with a MTF butch friend of mine. When I complained they offered to let me back in (because they decided I was a “true transsexual”) but not my butch friend.
Needless to say, I didn’t go back. And this sucked because I was in a rural area and there weren’t a lot of other places to go for support.
I’m lucky to be in the Bay Area now. I can go to something trans* almost every night of the week if I want to… but it still makes me sad.
I wonder how much of this is organic or how much is repeated directly from cis gatekeepers who want to make it seem like lots of people are making mistakes just so they can justify their position. I have met people, in person, who say they made a mistake. But you know what? Gatekeepers didn’t catch them. What they said and felt at the time matched the “true transsexual” narrative. And they still felt like it was a mistake.
So you know what, maybe that’s ok. Maybe that’s just part of it.
I think it’s ok to make mistakes.
It sucks, it reallyreally does… but we’re humans and it happens.
I just don’t see how ostracizing people who want support and who want to be part of the community makes it better for anyone.
I think it’s ok to see one person’s kind of trans as different. I feel different, and that’s why I like describing myself as a Femme FTM. But I don’t think it does anybody any good to create barriers just because people are different. It’s perfectly ok to strongly identify with that binary, to not feel queer, or to even not identify with being trans at all. What’s scummy is making it seem like it’s not ok or not real for other people who do identify that way.
(Source: transdrescher)
